Takeaways from the Vance and Walz vice presidential debate

The clearest divide of the night came when Walz put Vance on the spot during a discussion of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

“Did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked Vance, attempting to force the Ohio senator to acknowledge a reality that Trump himself won’t.

“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” was how Vance began his response.

“That is a damning nonanswer,” Walz shot back.

Vance tried to sidestep the violent attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol on the day Congress was gathering to officially count Electoral College votes and certify Joe Biden’s victory.

“On January 6, what happened? Joe Biden became president; Donald Trump left the White House,” Vance said.

Walz, though, drilled into the details of the costs of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.

“He lost this election, and he said he didn’t. One hundred and forty police officers were beaten at the Capitol that day, some with the American flag, and several later died,” he said. “The democracy is bigger than winning an election.”

Vance tried to redirect the discussion of democracy into a debate about social media censorship. But each time he tried, Walz pushed back, arguing that Trump was already laying the groundwork to reject the outcome of the 2024 race if he loses.

“Here we are four years later, in the same boat,” Walz said. “The winner needs to be the winner. This has got to stop. It’s tearing our country apart.”

During a debate over immigration and border security, Walz invoked Vance’s false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of residents in Springfield, Ohio.

“There’s consequences for this,” Walz said, pointing out that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, dispatched state troopers to Springfield to ensure the safety of children after a series of bomb threats.

Vance shot back, “The people I care most about in Springfield are the American citizens.”

In the Ohio city and others like it, Vance said, because of an influx of migrants, “you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you’ve got housing that is totally unaffordable.”

What Vance didn’t say: The 12,000 to 15,000 Haitian migrants in Springfield are in the United States legally.

But Walz didn’t fact-check Vance on that matter. And when he didn’t, CBS moderator Margaret Brennan explained those immigrants’ legal status.

The clash over Springfield came during a lengthy back-and-forth over immigration policy. Vance repeatedly referred to Harris as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” a label that refers to her 2021 assignment to tackle the root causes of migration from Central American countries. And Walz hammered Trump for his role in thwarting a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year, saying the former president did so in order to keep immigration alive as a campaign issue.

“We could come together and solve this if we didn’t let Donald Trump continue to make it an issue,” Walz said.

New reporting by Minnesota Public Radio News and APM Reports in the lead up to Tuesday’s debate called into question Walz’s claims about how frequently he traveled to China, which he has previously said was as many as “about 30 times.” Reports contradicted those claims and specifically whether the Minnesota governor was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

CNN also reported additional information on Walz’s claims earlier on Tuesday.

When asked about the reports and the discrepancy, a Harris campaign spokesperson said it was “likely closer to 15” times.

And when asked directly during the debate Walz filibustered, first describing his upbringing and rise in electoral politics before conceding that he can sometimes get caught up in the moment, be a “knucklehead,” and said he “misspoke.”

Vance didn’t seek to directly capitalize on Walz’s concession, but alluded to it in a different question shortly thereafter, saying, “When you misspeak, you ought to be honest with the American people about that.”

As the debate turned to abortion, both candidates were asked to address claims about their ticket’s stances on reproductive rights.

Walz was asked to respond to a false assertion from Trump that the Minnesota governor supports abortion in the ninth month. In one of his stronger moments of the night, Walz brought up the personal stories of women who faced health crises or died due to state abortion bans.

“In Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade,” Walz said. “We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care.”

While discussing abortion, the governor incorrectly claimed the Trump campaign and the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would create a “registry of pregnancies.” The organization’s proposal would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect data on abortions.

Vance was asked if the Trump campaign wants to create a “federal pregnancy monitoring agency,” referencing another past claim by Walz.

“Certainly we won’t,” Vance said. The Ohio senator defended the repeal of federal abortion protections, pointing to a 2023 ballot initiative in his state that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. Vance argued that the Republican Party needs to do a better job of advancing “pro-family” policies, including access to fertility treatments and make housing more affordable.

Vance and Walz had something approaching a constructive conversation about gun violence in America, agreeing that it is bad, getting worse and needs to be addressed – especially in schools.

That this bears noting underscores just how fruitless past Democratic-led efforts have been in stemming the bloody tide. But the question of how to deal with it, despite the friendly nods between the two onstage, remained unresolved.

Vance at one point even suggested that the current administration’s border policy (or, as he put it, “Kamala Harris’ open border”) was a driving factor – a non sequitur given the length and depth of the crisis. He did, however, also acknowledge it was a more complicated issue.

Walz mostly agreed with that sentiment but fought to keep the conversation from turning into a stalemate. When Vance pointed to mental health and drug use as another cause of gun deaths, Walz sought to refocus the conversation.

“Sometimes it just is the guns,” Walz said. “It’s just the guns.”

The Minnesota governor agreed that lawmakers “should look at all the issues” but stopped there to add a line of caution.

“This idea of stigmatizing mental health – just because you have a mental health issue doesn’t mean you’re violent,” Walz said.

The candidates also shared concerns over how schools were responding to the threat of active shooters. Again, though, Vance treated the issue as something more like a force of nature than a policy question.

“I unfortunately think we have to increase security in our schools,” he said, acknowledging that it was not a pleasant prospect. “We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the doors stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger.”

Walz agreed, in part, but, in urging tighter restrictions, asked viewers, “Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?”

This story has been updated.